Hinton Hollow Death Trip

by Will Carver

  WHAT I THINK ABOUT

  THE HUMAN SOUL

  It is real.

  It is in trouble.

  Perhaps one does not have to wait for death in order for a part of it to leave their being.

  Twenty-one grams is not a lot. Dorothy was weighed down by her emotions as well as the composition of her body. She hated herself for what she was doing, and for giving up. She was alone and low. It burdened her on the inside. I think her soul would have weighed more.

  Shortly after her soul may have departed, the largely atrophied muscles in Ms Reilly’s body relaxed, including the sphincter muscles, meaning that substances held in the bladder and bowels while she was alive were given the opportunity to spill.

  Further weight loss.

  In total, it was less than a can of Coke.

  Unnoticeable.

  She had nobody.

  And nobody would ever see. She was face down with food still in her throat. She had wet herself. There was shit in her underwear. But in that week, it ranked very low that Dorothy Reilly may have lost her soul.

  Even a heart covered in fat can love. Can yearn. Can break.

  Can be pushed too hard.

  A CAT

  It looked too much like a cat, even with the legs folded in against the torso. So, Darren decided to remove the head and wrap each section separately in clingfilm. The head was squeezed into a tight ball and the rest into a feline ballotine.

  There was a separate bin for recycling food that was kept underneath the sink. Darren threw the head into the plastic box and disposed of the rest of his old pet in the receptacle that was reserved for other general waste.

  He thought nothing of it.

  I was with him but I did not have a hand in this. He was changing by himself now. And he was enjoying it. The freedom of it. This was who Darren had always been inside.

  It does not seem right that his soul would weigh the same as Dorothy’s.

  He had the capacity for more. Greater evil. Like Dorothy Reilly, he was alone. Darren was not a well-known member of the Hinton Hollow community.

  One more push and he could be.

  One more.

  A pig. A cat. More.

  A HUMAN

  I don’t know why Annie broke windows.

  I can’t choose how individuals will react to my touch. Smashing the glass meant something to her. Perhaps her life was so neat and ordered and structured that throwing something through a window and creating something imperfect and cracked and messy was a release.

  Maybe that’s why she chose Liv Dunham’s lounge as her second victim. Liv was loved in the village. Her students respected her, parents spoke highly, she was due to marry her school sweetheart. A perfect target.

  Maybe Annie just wanted to break something.

  In the morning on day three, I visited Annie Harding and I shook her awake from a guiltless sleep.

  Her husband was fidgeting as the light began to creep in through the blinds. Annie felt beneath the covers. His bare chest was smooth and muscular. He stopped moving as she stroked down his body, then his eyes opened slightly when her hand pushed beneath the waistband of his boxer shorts.

  ‘Well, that’s one way to wake me up in the morning.’

  ‘You just stay there,’ she instructed, looking him straight in the eyes. No make-up and her hair in disarray, she looked younger. She was different somehow.

  Her head ducked beneath the quilt and she kissed her husband’s body, working her way downwards before taking his dick and putting it in her mouth. He couldn’t remember the last time Annie had done that, even while drunk, but he didn’t want to say anything.

  It didn’t take long to bring him to the height of excitement. He knew that he had to tell her when he was about to come so that she could stop and finish the job with her hand, leaving a mess on his stomach, watching his face as he hit that moment of nothingness. It was an unwritten agreement that they had.

  He told her. But she ignored it. Instead, she pushed the covers away from her head so that she could look him in the eyes as he came in her mouth.

  Neither of them spoke for a minute afterwards, lying next to one another, staring at the ceiling. Annie was smiling. Her husband in shock.

  ‘I guess it’s only fair that I should make the breakfast this morning.’ He smiled and groaned slightly as he sat up. ‘You want coffee?’

  Annie Harding did not want coffee. She did not want to break any more windows. In fact, she was a woman who knew exactly what she wanted. All I had to do was give her a push and watch as she did the rest.

  She sat up, too. Then grabbed her husband’s shoulder and pulled him back to the bed. It wasn’t aggressive and he could have fought against it but instead chose to lean into the playfulness. Annie straddled his stomach and looked down at her husband. She was wearing a grey vest and no underwear.

  ‘I don’t know where you think you’re going.’ And she moved herself up the bed until her knees were either side of her man’s head.

  The breakfast could wait a while longer.

  I could not.

  I had rounds to make.

  BYSTANDERS

  People do not call the police when they see that a young woman has taken it upon herself to kneel on the concrete and unzip the trousers of a nightclub bouncer. It’s not a crime worth reporting. It is disgusting to witness, even for a moment, even a sideways glimpse. But what are you going to do? Chastise the girl mid-prayer? Confront one of those muscle-bound ex-military types who are undoubtedly preparing to unload their damaged-by-steroid-use, lazy swimmers into the mouth of the naive, hooch-soused wannabe dancer?

  Another way that evil presents itself: bystanders.

  Very little is officially divulged about the events that occur at The Split Aces club on the outskirts of Hinton Hollow. It isn’t even really a nightclub, and the bouncers are more commonly referred to as guards.

  It hasn’t been officially disowned by the town, but it isn’t acknowledged, either – the building is there, but nobody sees it. Though, should something untoward occur, Constable Reynolds would undoubtedly be the person on the front desk who would take the call. And, in that week, Detective Sergeant Pace would be the only man unafraid to follow things up.

  But nothing was reported from that side of town on the second night. And there was no aggravation outside The Arboreal. No one had sped through the crossroads and jumped the lights on their way to somewhere more interesting. Very few people were outside in Hinton Hollow on night two of that dark week. Most had heard about the death of the Brady boy and intended to spend that evening with their own families, talking and hugging and double-locking the doors and triple-checking the windows.

  In fact, it seemed to Constable Reynolds that just about everyone in Hinton Hollow was safe at home. All with the exception of Ernie Cavet, who had closed a deal at the IT company where he worked and had shared several bottles of Malbec with his boss to celebrate.

  He’d arrived back in Hinton Hollow on the last train and hadn’t heard the news. Then he’d wobbled his way across the playing fields, not noticing the darkness soaking the dirt path that led into the woods where Oz Tambor was lying in the boot of a car, shaking. And he knocked over a plant pot in his garden while looking for the spare key to enter his own house while his latest wife called Constable Reynolds about a noise in the garden.

  There had also been the woman worried about her boyfriend. He hadn’t come home but it had only been a day. Liv Dunham, he reminded himself. And Oscar Tambor. Reynolds had remembered the names clearly. Not that he was particularly skilled at his job, but because he had only received those two calls on what had turned out to be a laborious graveyard shift.

  He assumed, like others, that the boyfriend was stepping out on this girl. Probably sampling the delights over at The Split Aces – Split Arses, he called it. The only thing happening in Hinton Hollow seemed to be the Brady case and he was not involved in that now that Pace was back. He probably would have been sidelined, an
yway. His forte was the front desk; his face was kind. Dopey and largely vacant, but kind. Approachable. Reynolds was filler at best but he took it upon himself to remember Liv Dunham and the call she had made. He would check on his next shift to see whether she ever called back. He doubted she would. Oscar Tambor will come home stinking of strange and she’ll forgive him, he thought.

  Pace had dropped off Owen Brady – the father of the dead kid – a few hours before and let him sweat things out in a cell. Now, it was morning, and he was back to question him. It had been the most interesting part of Reynolds’ night. He’d got a little excited by it. He knew he shouldn’t have but it was just about the most thrilling event in the history of Hinton Hollow, as far as he could remember – like most, he’d lived here all his life. He was too young to remember the incident with Carson Chase and that other dark time – another small story in Hinton Hollow. Good to be back.

  Tragic, he told himself, but it’s about time something happened in this town.

  Forty-five minutes later he’d be at home, alone with a beer at 11:30 in the morning. He didn’t have a problem with the booze – though he liked it – it was simply that it felt like the night to Constable Reynolds. He was also going to heat up a lasagne before going to bed for eight hours, wake up, eat a bowl of cereal and get dressed for another late shift.

  Eight hours was more sleep than Detective Sergeant Pace had that entire week.

  He hadn’t slept properly since Swinley Forest. Closing his eyes meant seeing a killer handcuffed to one of the trees.

  G u i l t, for Pace, was like espresso for an insomniac, though its taste was slightly more bitter.

  ‘Has he slept?’ There was no greeting from Pace. Nor had Reynolds felt any warmth from the detective the night before when the chief had announced Faith Brady’s death, not stating whether it was a murder or suicide.

  ‘Not a wink, as far as I can tell.’ Reynolds had been checking in on Owen Brady every twenty minutes as Pace had instructed before he left the station. Reynolds assumed he’d gone home to sleep. Where is his home, anyway?

  ‘Good. That’s what I thought,’ he responded, knowingly, the right side of his mouth curling up into something that was almost a grin.

  The look made Reynolds feel uncomfortable. He shouldn’t be smiling on a day like today, a week like this week, with everything going on. It was exciting but nothing to smile about.

  It was a big day for me.

  A big day for Evil.

  The door to the station rattled as a gust of wind blew out of town towards the train station. Pace jumped slightly and turned his gaze back over his shoulder. Reynolds noticed his anxiety but couldn’t see Pace’s balled right fist from behind the desk.

  I needed to rattle him.

  To build.

  ‘Looks like that long summer has come to an abrupt end,’ Reynolds offered. ‘It’ll start getting dark before you know it.’

  Pace had no time for small talk about the weather, he was just pleased that nothing had come in behind him and caught him unaware.

  ‘Chief out back?’

  ‘Where he always is.’

  Pace walked around the front desk and headed towards the door at the back that led into the part of the police station that people hardly ever saw. Both men looked at the large clock on the back wall. To Pace, the hands seemed to be moving so fast it looked more like a fan. Reynolds wondered whether the thing had stopped working.

  Pace stopped before opening the back door reserved for employees only.

  ‘Thanks for checking in on him.’

  Reynolds shrugged his shoulders and tilted his head to one side as though saying no problem, that’s my job. Then he smiled when the door closed behind the detective. He was dark and new and unknown to a degree but Detective Sergeant Pace had given Constable Reynolds something that he rarely received. Praise. Validation that his efforts were worthwhile.

  But the approval and the excitement should have stayed within him. He should never have smiled. Not that week. When people were dying and Mrs Beaufort had been struck down. It wasn’t right.

  He wanted his beer and to talk with Father Salis. He wanted to leave through the door that kept blowing open. But the hands on the clock didn’t want to move.

  THE SHOW MUST GO ON

  Everyone knew he was back. But, after two days, the town still thought of him as their possible saviour. That he would know how to deal with something like this.

  I let them think that. I let him think that.

  But it had to change.

  He needed to see those black flames. He needed to feel them. He had done something bad, so I had to do something worse.

  IF DETECTIVE PACE HAD NOT

  GONE INTO SWINLEY FOREST

  You would not have heard of Hinton Hollow.

  I would have only visited here once, for Carson Chase.

  Jacob Brady would have made it home from school.

  Liv Dunham would have become Liv Tambor.

  Mrs Beaufort would still appear to be kind.

  Detective Sergeant Pace had left Owen Brady at the station and told him to rest. An impossible task with his youngest son being shot two days earlier and his wife joining the boy in the morgue the next night. The scene had screamed suicide to Pace but the chief wasn’t taking any chances. He could feel the change in Hinton Hollow as much as Pace, who would soon start to blame himself for everything. Just as he had in the city.

  ‘Come in,’ the chief boomed from behind his flimsy door when Pace knocked. The door had frosted glass and etched in black were the words Inspector Anderson, arched into a semi-circle like some old-fashioned American private investigator. (RD would love that kind of thing.)

  ‘Ah, Pace. What’s the deal with the Brady fellow? Blamed the wife, did he?’

  Anderson was a slight puzzle for Pace at first. He’d come across this kind of detachment before, hardened chief inspectors who had seen too much that they couldn’t forget, seemingly desensitised to the violence and obvious corruption that jacked itself into their everyday lives. But he expected something different in his hometown. Something more wholesome, perhaps. Caring.

  Pace had never heard of Anderson before and he didn’t remember him from when he was a kid. He was older than Pace by maybe fifteen years, early fifties. It could have been that he had arrived in Hinton Hollow from the outside, that would explain his lack of propriety. It could simply be that he felt threatened by the arrival of a City Detective. He was playing up. Being the tough guy.

  Tickled by Evil.

  His inspector sat behind a desk that looked as though it used to belong to Mrs Beaufort when she attended school. It wasn’t ostentatious, it was practical and it was there. Anderson sat behind it with a regimentally straight back though his chair was leaning slightly giving him an air of looseness. He looked as big sitting down as RD did standing up but less broad, less bearlike.

  It was the moustache that finally settled Pace’s opinion. That giant, thick, orange moustache that wobbled over his top lip while his Oxford accent resonated beneath. A moustache wasn’t something you often saw on its own, even with the older members of town who had seen battle. It was more comical than serious – though it was a serious moustache. What it said about Inspector Anderson of the Hinton Hollow police was that he absolutely did not give a fuck what you thought.

  ‘I haven’t spoken to him properly yet, sir.’ Pace found himself trying, for some reason, to sound as matter-of-fact as his superior.

  ‘Leave him to sweat a bit. Of course. Probably best. You think he did it?’ Anderson placed the end of a pen in his mouth and that simple action made Pace want to smoke.

  ‘Absolutely not.’

  The inspector nodded as though Pace had just uttered a most interesting piece of information.

  ‘It looks pretty cut and dried to me. Everything at the house looked normal. The kid was in bed, the wife was upstairs in the bath, the husband was downstairs drowning his sorrows in beer.’

  ‘Don�
�t think he got a bit drunk and bumped her off for not looking after the kids properly?’

  Fuck, this guy has no filter at all. Pace spoke to himself, engaging his own filter.

  It was nothing to do with me. It’s just how he was. There had been no tickle from Evil.

  ‘It’s far more likely that she felt worse about herself than he felt about her, sir. There were enough pills and vodka in the vicinity to prove lethal, and I’m sure the post-mortem will show this. Her skin was wrinkled. He’d have had to drug her, wait until she passed out before cutting her wrists and thigh, then wait downstairs while drinking for an hour before feigning a rescue attempt for the ears of the only possible witness.’

  ‘Stranger things, Detective Pace. Stranger things.’ He looked towards the ceiling at that point as though trying to recall a similar case. Of course, in Hinton Hollow, nothing had ever occurred that was even microscopically similar.

  ‘The door had been locked from the inside. Owen Brady had to smash through it from the bedroom.’

  ‘That’s how it looks. I think you’re probably right, but let’s squeeze the little fellow a tad, eh? Cover things off. Tick all the boxes. And then get out there and find who shot the man’s son.’

  ‘I imagine that the schools will be shut today?’ Pace changed the direction of the conversation.

  ‘Out of respect?’

  The schools had been shut on day two but that was long enough.

  ‘Out of safety.’

  ‘Oh Pace, you have been gone a while, haven’t you.’ Anderson pulled the pen from beneath his substantial facial hair and sat forward on his chair, leaning against his too-small desk.

  Pace was trying not to screw his face up at his new boss but it was proving difficult. Who did he think he was talking to?